While lawyers and courts argue whether a web address should be seen as an accessory to a crime, the rest of us should be asking what crime? All that The Pirate Bay has done is facilitated a peaceful sharing of information among consenting parties. If anything we should thank them for putting the world’s creative content at our finger tips. This has improved the lives of countless people. For example many of us are now able to give a new album a full listen before deciding whether to contribute our money to the artist who made it.

While we should thank The Pirate Bay for these positive benefits, we should also thank them for making the obsolete system of intellectual property rights even less enforceable. Patents and copyrights are government granted monopolies that exist only to restrict competition and increase the prices of products. Like other state interventions, they benefit elites at our expense. Copying is not theft and should not be treated as such.